Saturday, September 13, 2008

SPOTLIGHT ON THE SPOTLESS MIND: Fall 08 Issue of ACIDEMIC online now

This is a very special edition of Acidemic, as we focus on the themes and implications of Michel Gondry's endlessly fascinating cinema masterpiece, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: time travel, love, memory, color, desire, adaptation, amnesia, and the blurry twilit crossroads between fiction, belief, and reality. Our French correspondent, Severine Benzimra catches us up on the state of Gallic cinema (which she notes is "not just Gondry"); emerging writer Jonathan Doughty kicks things off with a look at Winslet's changing hair color; abstract artist Audra Graziano contributes the SUNSHINE-inspired piece, "Forget." Noted film historian David Del Valle brings an in-depth look at Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS via the lens of Lovecraft adaptations through the ages.

From me you get an in-depth look at the time travel/amnesiac aspect of Jess Franco's 1967 trash-art classic, SUCCUBUS, and a comparison of SUNSHINE with reincarnation stories from the 1930s, like THE MUMMY, LOST HORIZON and SHE. Also a deep look at the Lacanian implications of the "did she or didn't she" aspects of Elia Kazan's BABY DOLL.

Last but not least I added the full collection of five short "promo" films made for the Josh Furst book, SABOTAGE CAFE, starring Mandy Richichi. A chronicle of a runaway teenage girl, the five films show what appears at first to be a rapid descent into hell but may in fact be something else entirely. Can our perceptions as spectator of an event change it from bad to good for those involved? Who knows? The Shadow knows... and maybe Gondry. -Erich Kuersten

ACIDEMIC Journal of Film and Media

Presenting gonzo-theoretical film criticism through the smashed-in doors of perception: from the subversive pre-code 1930s, to the psychedelic 60s, the sex apocalypse 70s, the space cowboy 80s, the candy flip 90s, and the simulacratic widescreen blur of the 'now', Acidemic is digging deep for the jugular, and the jug...

Mission Statement

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piercing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."- H.P Lovecraft